What peaches and what penumbras!: Airports & Monumental Paris (Part 1)

After spending fifteen hours on trains and aeroplanes, what I really craved was spending fifteen hours on my feet, so last Saturday I got my wish. My mother last visited Paris when there were still first and second class designations on the metro, so forty years later we had to make sure that all the monuments were in the same place. The first ones we saw were the 2CVs parked outside the Concorde - the only things they apparently gained in the past thirty years were some seat cushions and straps that pass as seatbelts. They would have come in handy right around the Champs Elysées, which my mother insisted we walk so that we could see the "Arc de Triomphe." I think she wanted to see something else at the end of that long line of trees....

Arc de Triomphe, mon cul!

After that leisurely hour-long gambol, we wandered our way into le Jardin des Tuileries, which was home to many trees, many naked statues, and many pigeons.

We then made our way across the bridge to our first official destination, la Musée d'Orsay, but we had to pause for the requisite Parisian glamour shot on the Seine.

In the background you can see the building of the Musée d'Orsay, which is in itself a work of art, all sweeping arches and panes of painted glass. It houses the original 1900 train station and its impressive gilded clock, along with hundreds of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. Unfortunately they were remodeling part of the museum when we visited, so I missed, among other things, Starry Night and Whistler's Mother, but at least now I have an excuse to visit again. Also, next time I am going to somehow dismantle one of the massive Art Nouveau bedframes and take it with me. I will make headlines, because I don't think that any art thief has thought to take furniture before.

After far too short a stay in the museum, we returned to the banks of the Seine, where my mother nearly got Aja a plaque that read "Chien en psychoanalyse" at one of the fold-up used bookstores that line the river's edge. Probably if they sold a "Fille en psychoanalyse" plaque she would have bought that, too.

We walked down to l'Île de la Cité, where the long line at the entrance to Notre Dame snaked its way across half the island. Instead of getting caught in that tourist trap, we walked to neighboring Île St. Louis and got ice cream, possibly the best I've ever had (not that I've ever had white chocolate ice cream before). Along the way we passed a flower market, hidden here behind one of the old Art Nouveau metro signs, and a wayward band of musicians who transported themselves out of the 1940s and into the middle of the street, piano, cello, and all.

I don't actually remember where we ate that night, nor did I take any pictures, probably because I was too busy thinking about amputating my aching feet. But I do remember that on Friday night we went to what my guidebook touted as "the best vegetarian restaurant in all of Paris," in the Marais quarter, and unlike with the metro map, this time our guide was entirely correct. The food was delicious and highly inauthentic, but the prices were definitely Parisian.